


The Answer

by loadedcasserole



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Established Relationship, M/M, Rung-Centric, Some kinda hand-wavy AU where the Lost Light didn't take off
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23370556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loadedcasserole/pseuds/loadedcasserole
Summary: With no reason given, Rung is called to a room full of the highest ranking Autobots, where he wastes no time collapsing right before them.If he could stay awake long enough to hear two sentences, he might just learn why.
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock/Ratchet
Comments: 15
Kudos: 63





	The Answer

His optics were closed, but even so, Rung could tell that an impressive amount of lasers were flashing over him. Above him, a machine hummed and clicked noisily. He laid still and calm.

An upbeat chirp sounded, the medical scan complete. Rung looked to the side to see Ratchet tapping irately at a computer display. If it were anyone else, Rung would have asked if something was bothering them, but this was Ratchet and not a day went by when he didn’t express some form of exasperation. “Does pressing harder make it work better?” he asked.

“Hush you.” Ratchet said and detached the display. He motioned for Rung to sit up and levered up next to him. He tilted the screen toward Rung. “Are you familiar with brain scans?”

“Somewhat,” he said. Rung didn’t have the same level of understanding that a surgeon would have, but he studied them with a degree of regularity. Useful things. There were many physical maladies that psychiatry just couldn't find on its own.

“Have you been scanned before?”

The only meaningful one he had, had been ages ago, when the science for accurate, detailed scans was quite new, and he and Froid had thought to prove a point to each other and took advantage of an empty lab. They had scanned each other and finally laid the argument of whether or not there was anything but air between their audials to rest. It had long since satisfied the small curiosity he had for his own head.

Rung thought back to his time spent with the Functionists. That had been that last time, and they had done that and more, but he hadn’t been privy to any of their findings. “Yes, but it’s been a while. Nothing was unusual then, from what I understand.”

Goodness knew they would have explored every nook in his head for the sake of research if that were the case.

Ratchet magnified a portion of his brain. It was the memory center, Rung realized. A corner of it stood out. It looked strange compared to the rest of the components, but he was having trouble pinning down exactly what it was.

Ratchet pointed to the area. “It might have been missed. It’s subtle, but this is not what it should look like. This part here is connected all wrong. It’s essentially a dead area.” Now that Ratchet was tracing the area, Rung thought he could see the problem. The pathways didn't match the surrounding area, and they somehow skipped the expected connections. It may as well have not been connected to him. It just couldn’t work.

That would absolutely cause problems for him.

Rung rubbed his neck, suddenly very anxious. He’d seen this sort of thing before. Never this elegantly executed however. “Do you think it’s-”

“Shadowplay? Yes.”

A chill ran through him. He drew up his legs as though there was something lurking beneath the med-berth.

When Rung blacked out this morning, in front of the assorted leadership of Cybertron, he hadn’t expected this kind of diagnosis. Rung had no memory, or physical evidence, behind his assumptions, but when Ratchet had pulled him back to the medical center, Rung thought it would uncover something far more ordinary. A broken fuel gauge, making him under-fuel, could cause a collapse. A forgotten bump to the head. A virus.

He never would have guessed something like this.

He hadn’t known Ratchet for long—they only met occasionally in the medical center, but they had established a decent rapport, and Rung was feeling incredibly grateful to have the bot next to him.

A cascade of questions filled his head, faster than he could voice. He snapped his gaze to Ratchet. “Is that why I was called today? I’ve been shadowplayed? Did I find out something I shouldn’t have?”

Killing him would be easier. Why leave him alive? He had little rank. His reputation, in shambles. No connections, and no useful skill-set. No one to press, should he go missing. It made no sense.

Ratchet laid a hand on his back. “No, that was- well. Hm. It’s hard to explain. _Very_ .” The medic opened his mouth as though to try at it anyway, but aborted it last minute. Ratchet set down his display and traced his chevron with his thumb. “Some people think- and you shouldn’t take this as true, since it’s _a stretch_ \- but some think . . . that you’re not really _you_. You’re someone else.”

The words didn’t make sense. He replayed them, thinking that he had misheard. Something unpleasant shifted in his fuel tank. He was who he was and that should be that.

“Who?” he asked. Not out of a real desire to know, but out of reactivity. It was the only natural response to such a confounding statement.

Ratchet’s hand moved up to hold the back of his neck. It was gentle and oddly intimate. The terrible sensation in his belly grew tenfold. Rung was about to receive some horrible news. Worse than possibly not being himself. He must be dying too. That was the only thing that could explain this behavior. As Ratchet released a slow exvent, Rung braced himself. “Well, okay, this is a long shot, but let’s try it like this- You are most certainly, one-hundred percent _not_ -”

Rung jolted suddenly as a sense of falling came over him. The lights brightened suddenly and his vision tilted wildly. He grabbed at the seat below him, but the weight on his neck stabilized him enough to get his bearings quickly. He had the sense that he had fallen into recharge.

"-elcome back.”

He leaned forward to stare at the floor. Ratchet cautiously released him. Rung pulled off his glasses to rub his optics free of the last dregs of vertigo. He had blacked out. Again. 

At least there wasn’t a crowd this time. If he could just hold together for a moment or two, he might get some answers. “You were saying?”

He wasn’t answered immediately, but finally, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“You were telling me that I wasn’t me.”

Ratchet grimaced. “ . . . Okay. You know what- I don’t think this is going to work. I can’t explain it, we’re going to have to find a mnemosurgeon to get to the bottom of this.”

No. That was not something to be used lightly. Not before he had exhausted every other possible route.

“If I have been shadowplayed,” Rung said evenly, “Then even the best surgeon might not help. And . . . even if they could, I’m not necessarily interested in recalling what I might be missing. I just want to understand.” He was curious about the matter. He just wasn’t eager. Recall was different from simple information. Rung had made it this far without knowing any of this, and wasn’t keen to rock the boat willy-nilly without having a better grasp of things.

Ratchet lightly patted him and returned to his display. He shrugged. "Look, it's not that I want to keep you in the dark. It's that everytime you’re told, you don't remember. I've told you twice now, but I may as well be saying nothing at all.”

Rung reviewed his data-banks to double-check.

Sure enough, they were devoid of whatever conversation Ratchet had made. At best, he could only remember the medic appearing in and out of dozens of faces who were trying to talk to him, and then finally hauling him out, yelling at everyone to shut up and stand back.

This might explain why the medic was so tight-lipped when Rung was deposited on the exam table. The odd reboot didn't typically cause harm, but too many could cause side-effects.

This was getting increasingly alarming.

“Let’s not talk about that specifically then.” He was getting tired of blacking out in any case. “Do you feel certain that it’s the information that’s doing this to me and not some other force?”

“Absolutely,” Ratchet said.

Rung nodded as he considered that.

Strange. Deletion and memory edits were par the course for shadowplay, but he had not once heard of a sustained block like this. Once the surgeon was gone, the mind continued on with its new state. It didn't get picky on what data it received. Guarding memory retrieval like this sounded more like a malignant program or a virus, but mnemosurgeons didn’t mix the mediums due to the added danger to a surgeon in an already dangerous field.

What had he done to warrant this?

“Have you seen anything like this before?”

“Not like this.” Ratchet waved his hand. “Certainly not with shadowplay victims.”

Just as Rung thought. It might be worthwhile for him to dig through case files. Maybe someone had been misdiagnosed. Most medical professionals hadn’t been aware of the practice before the war and had often attributed shadowplay to everything from head injuries to inherent abnormalities to just stress.

"What do you think you can tell me?" He could ask for small details about this other person—what sort of personality they had, what mannerisms, how they liked their energon and possibly come out just fine, but he would wait. There was no need to rush the matter.

“Mm. I’m not sure. Not a lot. You’re fine otherwise." Ratchet tilted Rung's head down for a cursory look. A blue light appeared and disappeared after only a moment. He was looking for the tell-tale marks of surgery. "No real way of telling how long you’ve been shadowplayed, but it's not new. Megatron made sure to thin out the mnemosurgeons early on, so you’re probably looking at the old end of the spectrum."

Right. So sometime before the war or the start of it. That was only, oh . . . most of his life?

He scoured his mind for what he could have possibly done. He hadn't always made his peers happy, and he had known a couple of surgeons professionally. Could he have upset one?

It wasn’t impossible. Rung wasn’t in a position to point at suspects because any decent surgeon would have erased their tracks. They could flit away every meeting and conversation with him from his life, if they chose.

He considered an alternative. The Decepticons had demolished most of the profession, but they had historically used a few. Notably as sleeper agents.

That might explain Ratchet’s claim of this other persona he supposedly had, and he did come out of a lot of situations that most didn’t survive from. Rung always contributed it to dumb luck—or phenomenally bad luck, in his darker moments—but if events were manufactured and planned, that would increase the rate of survival.

What a horrible thought.

If that was true, then every thought and every action of his had the possibility of being influenced by an outside source. He was suddenly not just Rung, who understood himself well enough and made his own decisions, but the unwitting puppet of another. Worse, he could even be some made up character, with a made up story and credentials, to a more full and real version of himself.

A spike of pressure built from within. One of his fuel lines was bound to burst. He had the urge to leap and run, as though distance from the med-center would improve the situation.

This kind of thinking could drive someone mad, he thought.

It was too terrible to utter, but too serious to ignore, so he went for something easier to shove past his glossa. “Do you think I’m dangerous?” he asked quietly.

The lack of an armed guard around him, suggested that he wasn’t, but Ratchet had a policy of ousting overbearing soldiers anyway, so it didn’t actually indicate much.

Ratchet squinted and looked him over. Rung straightened up. He would accept the medic’s assessment.

" . . . Depends." His spark seized up. "But the fact that you're asking makes me feel better about it."

Ratchet didn’t seem tense at all around him, at the very least, so that allayed some of Rung’s fears. "How might I be dangerous?"

The medic looked away. “You’re going to get the idiots excited. We’ve been told to keep all this secret, to head them off, but there’s already been a leak. Most aren’t going to pay it any attention, because it’s too weird, but a few will.”

This was becoming much more complicated by the klik. “That’s why I was called?”

“A little, yes.”

“Ah.” He said, as though it answered a great deal. It didn’t. But Ratchet seemed to think that the danger had more to do with other people and that heartened him somewhat.

Ratchet raised a leg onto the berth to face him fully. “You know, all this time, everyone’s been trying to tell you what they think is going on, and it’s not been working. So how about I tell you what _I_ think?”

“You haven’t tried that yet?”

“Not really. Well, once, but I didn’t do a good job of it and I think you got the wrong idea.” 

Rung lifted his hand just as Ratchet opened his mouth, ready to belt out what was doubtlessly an illuminating thought. “Wait. How many times have I gone offline already?”

“Mm, seven that I know of. Probably more. We’d have to ask Prowl. He has the security footage locked down.”

More than seven? Five would be bad enough. 

Touchy subject indeed.

His recharge tonight, if he managed to get it, was all but guaranteed to be horrid. He nodded. “I’m interested to hear your ideas, but now might not be the best time. It can likely wait, can’t it? Until tomorrow? Or-” He paused. His mouth dropped open stupidly.

Ratchet grabbed him by the shoulders, as though expecting him to fall over. It was a reasonable reaction. Rung hadn't had the best record for staying upright today. He patted at the medic's servos to allay his fears. “What is it?” Ratchet asked.

“I just- I’m sorry. I got so caught up in trying to find a work-around that I didn’t think about how that could be a bad thing. A very bad thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I could be wrong, but if I get enough small details over time to paint a whole picture, then I could constantly work it out and get stuck in a loop of system reboots.”

They both lapsed into silence. Long enough to where Rung knew that Ratchet too thought it was a very serious and strong possibility.

Rung wasn't always satisfied with his life, but living the same five kliks over and over again wasn't any kind of life at all. If it got to that point, he eventually might not ever wake up. 

He had to treat this with the utmost care.

A cheery noise came from across the room. They both jumped. Ratchet's head whipped to the door. It was the door chime. Someone wanted inside.

"Go away!" Ratchet shouted. Rung cringed at the volume.

Ratchet frowned, somehow finding the extra space to stretch his mouth across. "Idiots think that if they sneak past First Aid, they can see whoever they want. Just 'cause his hands are cold, doesn't mean-" His head tilted and he looked just above Rung's shoulder. He was receiving a call.

Ratchet's annoyance melted off his face by the end of the call and he stood. "Hang on, I'll be right back." He darted out the door.

It wasn't quick.

Rung had time enough to re-examine his brain scan and fiddle with the scanner. He was curious to find out the options it had. His scan was nearly as good of quality as anyone could ask for, but he thought that it could be pushed to be a little clearer. The added clarity wouldn’t help them at all, not unless he intended to go on an operating table, but knowing more in this small way made him feel better.

Ratchet walked back in before he got far. "Hey- stop that. Are you even- do you even know how to use that?"

Sort of. Barely. It wasn’t overly familiar, but he had played with a similar model some five million years ago. He guiltily plucked his hands free.

"Nevermind. I think we're done here for today, but I need to discuss something with you before you get caught up in this mess. It shouldn't knock you out." Ratchet drew closer and played with the dials on the equipment Rung had fiddled with. He wasn't sure, but he thought that Ratchet was making a show of how hard it was to re-calibrate it.

"What is it?"

“Like I said, you’re going to make idiots excited and, at the very least, I need you to keep one, very simple thing in mind during all this- You’re not special. You’re not more special or important than anyone else. You’re really not.”

Well . . . Rung really hoped he didn’t tell that to all his patients.

"I wouldn't claim to be otherwise." Rung said, as he felt his spark diminish ever so slightly. Ratchet shot him a grin. There was a shine to his optics that wasn't there before. Had Rung said something funny?

“Sure. But listen, and I wouldn’t say this unless I thought it was important, but people are going to come to you, they are going to think that you can help them, and they might talk you up, but it’s very important that you don’t listen to them and get excited yourself. It’s not good for you, and it’s not good for them.”

“ . . . Alright.”

“If someone asks you to do something or say something for them- don’t. Just walk away.”

He nodded, feeling, more than ever, that he was so far out of his depth that he was being dragged out to sea. For now, he would just have to put his trust in people who knew more about the situation than him.

“I have a lot to think about," he murmured. "Could I call you later, if I have questions that I think could stand to be answered?”

Ratchet lowered the berth as a courtesy, so that he could hop down easily. “Sure. Anytime. I might not answer though if I think it could cause issues.”

“That will be fine. Thank you. This is all worryingly delicate and I appreciate your help. Are there any other small things that you can warn me about that might cause a problem?”

"Not much that I can think of right now. I would stay away from strangers and anyone you didn't see at the meeting. You still remember the meeting right?"

"Yes. There's a lot of gaps though. I remember seeing Red Alert passed out on the floor. He didn't have an episode, did he?"

"Uh, no. At least, not the usual kind."

Ratchet opened the door for him, but instead of leaving as readily as he thought, Rung found his vision eclipsed by an expanse of white. He looked up to see a mech with the worst case of repressed cheer that he had ever seen.

Ratchet introduced him. “This is Drift. He’s my conjunx, and he’ll be taking you to your quarters. Drift, this is Rung. He's a _psychiatrist._ ”

Rung couldn't recall ever hearing that sort of emphasis on his profession before and wondered at the meaning there.

A whistling sound came from the mech. It sounded similar to the small leaks of air that happened when a bot tried to hold their vents closed against a huge amount of pressure. Someone was _very_ excited.

“Oh. Hello.”

He wondered if this was Ratchet’s doing or if someone had demanded that he have an escort. Maybe he should revisit his sleeper-agent theory.

The mech fell to one knee and dipped his head in the most extreme degree of respect that Rung had ever been subjected to. “It is my greatest honor and privilege to meet you today, I-”

“Be careful Drift.” Ratchet said with warning in his voice.

The mech fell silent and stood with a nod. He leaned against the doorway towards Ratchet. “Thank you. I know you find it silly, but thank you.”

“It’s not silly, but don’t get your hopes up. This is not what people think it is.”

“I think, Ratchet, that you’re going to be very surprised.” Drift said, his smile not once waning. “But anyway, listen, Starscream’s been skulking about, so don’t be surprised if he drops by. If he does, _call_ me.”

“Oh good. It’ll be nice to finally have a place to put all these extra tools.”

“I’m serious. Ironhide is just outside, but if that’s not enough, _call_ me.”

“Alright, alright.”

Drift and Ratchet pressed their helms together in a small show of tenderness that was rare to see. It made Rung suddenly very wistful. He walked a few paces away to give them some degree of space, if not privacy. He imagined that they couldn't possibly care if they were doing that right here, right now, but he felt too out of place to do otherwise. 

Drift joined him but a moment later, proving his consideration largely unnecessary.

They passed by a mech right outside the waiting area. Ironhide, if Rung had to guess. He was leaning against the wall, chatting with a mini-bot. They both quieted as he passed. Their conversation picked up with some distance between them. Rung’s audials disregarded his common sense and he picked up curious words like “mistake” and “crazy”.

They wound through the halls sedately. No one else seemed to pay them any mind. Rung was fine with that. He was eager to lay in his berth for some quiet thought. He had a lot to consider and needed to take time to figure out the best way to approach the matter.

There was a bit of noise coming from up ahead. As they got closer, Rung recognized it as the sound of someone operating a drill. The power of it lent a small vibration to the floor. Voices filled the air. There was someone shouting orders.

A mech appeared around a corner. They were accompanied by a train of hover carts, filled to the brim with pink and blue crystals. Drift moved as though to take him by the shoulder, but only hovered his arm above Rung, as though he were composed of thorns. “This way,” he said, guiding them down a different path. If they were leaving the building, it would take longer now.

He looked to Drift. “Why does the med-center have so many energon crystals?”

Drift opened his mouth and shut it repeatedly. “You know, that is a very, very good question.”

Rung waited for an answer. He didn’t get one. Rung didn’t know Drift long enough to get a baseline, but if he had to guess by what his field was putting out, the mech was operating under some stress. He chose not to press.

**Author's Note:**

> "So we found God, but he has brain damage. Of fucking course." -Prowl probably
> 
> This was going to be a super silly story with people sobbing on Rung and leaving him weird gifts in his room, but I decided to do a slightly more serious take instead. I wonder sometimes if this was the right choice . . . Fortunately, I think that there's a lot of different ways of playing with the core concept of Rung being persistently unable to recall the most important fact ever, so if anyone wants to dig in that, go nuts brah. (And if you already have, lemme know so I can have a taste of that)
> 
> I really want to continue with this, at least a little further, but I'll need some time to plan more things out and revisit some other stories, including Summons, if you can believe that (second chapter is finished, I'm just not feeling very satisfied with it right now).


End file.
